Bush: War arrived on 9/11

He looks for backing for action in Iraq

September 01, 2006|By Mark Silva, Tribune national correspondent.

SALT LAKE CITY — President Bush, framing the war against terrorism as "the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st Century" and the war in Iraq as its central front, launched a new, three-week initiative Thursday to reclaim straying public support for the conflict in Iraq.

As the Bush administration works to portray an American struggle with "radical" Islamic terrorists as the historic successor to 20th Century wars against fascism and communism, the president is pointing to the upcoming fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks as a reminder of when this 21st Century war came ashore in the U.S.

Yet observers say the president's new offensive appears more precisely timed for the start of a fall election campaign in which the war in Iraq has become a pivotal issue in congressional and Senate races as the Republican Party struggles to maintain control of Congress.

Renewing a declaration he made in the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, the president vowed here that any nation that harbors terrorists also is "an enemy of the United States." And, directly accusing Iran of sponsoring terrorism in the Middle East, Bush pledged that Iran's "defiance" of demands to curtail its nuclear program will not go unpunished.

"The war we fight today is more than a military conflict," Bush told the annual convention of the American Legion. "It is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st Century."

Maintaining that combatants in Iraq, Lebanon and elsewhere "form the outlines of a single movement, a worldwide network of radicals that use terror to kill those who stand in the way of their totalitarian ideology," the president underscored a theme senior administration officials have been crafting recently: describing terrorists as "successors to fascists, to Nazis, to communists and other totalitarians of the 20th Century."

"We're now approaching the fifth anniversary of the day this war reached our shores," said Bush, whose public approval peaked at 90 percent after Sept. 11 but has slumped below 40 percent now. "As the horror of that morning grows more distant, there is the tendency to believe that the threat is receding and this war is coming to a close. That feeling is natural and comforting--and wrong. "

While Bush has asked that people not read political motivations into this new series of addresses that will culminate with a speech to the United Nations on Sept. 19, analysts say he is playing to a keypolitical strength in the face of terrorism with a goal of rekindling fear among American voters as midterm elections near.

`Strongest suit'

John Mueller, a professor of political science and national security at Ohio State University who has examined the impact of casualties on public support for war, suggests Bush is playing his strongest hand with this new offensive but has passed the point of regaining support for the war in Iraq.

"It's his strongest suit, and terrifying people over terror can win votes for him and his party," Mueller said. "There is an election coming. . . . The standard thing in an election is to focus on your strongest suit."

Mueller cited the words of 20th Century social critic H.L. Mencken: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed."

Yet, "judging from polls," public support for the administration's argument that the war in Iraq is central to the war against terrorism "is starting to wane," Mueller said. "I don't think they have any new arguments."

Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee and an early critic of the war with his 2004 campaign for president, said: "Today we only heard more of the same propaganda from a desperate Bush administration worried more about its party's political prospects this fall than about how to protect America and fight and win the real war on terror."

For the curtain-raiser of his September campaign for support for the war, Bush chose the American Legion at the Salt Palace Convention Center.

He directly confronted the campaign criticism from Democrats and a growing number of Republicans: That the U.S. took its eye off the enemy after Sept. 11 with its invasion of Iraq.

"Some politicians look at our efforts in Iraq and see a diversion from the war on terror," Bush said. "That would come as news to Osama bin Laden, who proclaimed that the third world war is raging in Iraq."

Scenes of violence

Acknowledging Americans' frustration with "sometimes unsettling" scenes of violence in Iraq, Bush said: "Some Americans didn't support my decision to remove Saddam Hussein. . . . But we should all agree that the battle for Iraq is now central to the ideological struggle of the 21st Century. We will not allow the terrorists to dictate the future of this century, so we will defeat them in Iraq."

If U.S. forces withdraw from Iraq, Bush maintained, the terrorists will "follow us" home.

And Bush, renewing a vow that he made after Sept. 11, took particular aim at Iran, which Thursday defied a UN Security Council deadline to cease enrichment of nuclear fuel, which Western leaders view as a bomb-building program.

"We have made it clear to all nations: If you harbor terrorists, you are just as guilty as the terrorists; you're an enemy of the United States and you will be held to account," Bush said.